The Tenderness of John Prine

Prine's 1995 album Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings clearly showcases the things I’ve come to love about Prine as a songwriter.

I had an opportunity in the summer of 2019 to see John Prine on the Bonnaroo stage but passed in favor of a pizza break. I knew he was considered a legend in the Nashville folk and Americana communities, but I hadn’t ever listened to his music and so decided I’d catch him next time. A few months later, I heard my first Prine song. The song was “Angel From Montgomery,” and it was performed by one of my favorite artists of all time, Brandi Carlile. I immediately recognized I was missing out on something I wanted to be a part of and so longed to dive head-first into his 50-year career as soon as possible. I didn’t know that just seven months later, just as I was beginning to fall in love with his music, tender heart, and humor, John Prine would be taken from us. 

I have regretted not seeing him at Bonnaroo ever since. I’ve mourned the time I could have appreciated the man and his music while he was with us. I had even considered pursuing an interview opportunity with him in early 2020 to talk about his 40-year-old Nashville record label, Oh Boy Records. It didn’t happen. Yet here I’m left with 50 years of music to soak in as I continue to learn about John Prine, and that is a blessing.

In the middle of his 18-album career comes Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings, a 1995 release that, while not my favorite of his records, so clearly showcases the things I’ve come to love about Prine as a songwriter. Take “Day Is Done,” a lullaby-like love song that sheepishly begins, “Do you like me? / Well, I hope you do / ‘Cause if you like me, then I think I’m gonna have to like you too,” like the most precious kindergartener sending a Valentine’s Day note. Love is perhaps the most sung-about emotion in all history, probably because it’s the most complex and important one. But here, Prine cuts through every complexity with child-like innocence to remind us that love is also simple. It’s as simple as a smile on a hard day or saying “Hello in There” to the old person growing lonesome down the street. It’s as simple as “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” as he reminds us on “This Love Is Real.”

For all his focus on love and simplicity in American life, Prine hardly allows his music to sound quaint or sentimental. His key is humor, and he wields it proficiently. A lot of times it’s just absurdities that make you smile, like “This Love is Real” follow-up. “Leave the Lights On”:

Feeling kind of bony
On the telephoney
Talking to Marconi
Eating Rice-a-Roni
Nominated for a Tony
For acting like a phoney
Watching Twilight Zoney
On my forty-two inch Sony

There’s nothing inherently funny here, but somehow it always garners a smile with its silly, nonsensical rhymes. Like his love songs, his humor is on occasion simple and child-like. But this is his secret weapon.

In inviting us to view the world with child-like innocence, Prine disarms us and opens our ears to hear the critiques he has to offer as well. For example, sandwiched between “Day is Done” and the ridiculous arena country anthem “Big Fat Love” is the anti-consumer culture blues song “Quit Hollerin’ At Me.” “I don't want your big French Fry / I don't want your car / I don't want to buy no soap / From no washed-up movie star,” he begins, and you can hear the wear of assaulting advertisements on Prine’s mind.

This song is fairly didactic, certainly moreso than the album’s masterpiece, which has the endorsement of Bob Dylan as Prine’s finest song and a meaning so subtle that I missed it multiple times. On “Lake Marie,” Prine delivers a serene chorus of “We were standing by peaceful waters” before jumping into a Hank Williams-style narration of a tale about Native Americans finding two white babies in the woods and naming lakes after them. The second verse jumps forward in time, and the narrator’s marriage is on the rocks while they camp on the lake shore. Finally, the final verse is a murder scene in the Lake Marie forest that the narrator views on TV. “Lake Marie” is the absolute opposite of didacticism, as Prine’s lyrics serve the story first and trust the listener to put the pieces together—that the arrival of white colonizers meant the arrival of generations of disturbance where peaceful waters once lay protected from the world’s darkness.

I love the tenderness with which John Prine treats his music. It’s easy to see why his approach to songwriting inspired some of my heroes—songwriters like Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell. Prine finds beauty in the people and world around him and asks us to, first, see that beauty through small eyes widening to try to take in as much as they can, and then, protect it with a fierce, real love. I’m sorry that he’s gone from us, and yet so thankful his music continues to just give us something to hold on to.